(Online Dating Industry Journal) A proposed settlement for a class action lawsuit filed against Yahoo! Personals in 2005 could bring changes to the service that give users more control over their profile. The proposed Terms of Settlement are as follows:
1. To the extent that they are not already in place, no later than 30 days after Final Approval of the Settlement, Yahoo! will take the following actions, which shall remain in force and effect for a period of two (2) years from the date of Final Approval of this Settlement by the Court:
(a) Yahoo! will maintain the "Report a Complaint" link on the profile detail pages appearing on the Yahoo! Personals website.
(b) Profiles that have been inactive for a period of 120 days shall be rendered unsearchable by Yahoo! and Yahoo! shall include this notification in its Additional Terms of Service relating to Yahoo! Personals.
(c) When a user of Yahoo! Personals cancels his or her subscription, a screen will be presented to the user giving the user the option to delete the profile, render the profile unsearchable or keep the profile active. If the user makes no selection, the profile will automatically be deactivated.
(d) Yahoo! will maintain mechanisms in place to detect duplicative photographs, abusive language and the revelation of improper personal information.
(e) Yahoo! will update its Additional Terms of Service relating to Yahoo! Personals to inform its users that that they may see profiles or other content which they feel were created by third parties, contrary to obligations in the applicable terms of services, guidelines and code of conduct, for purposes other than dating, including spam and commercial profiles.
(f) Yahoo! will modify its Additional Terms of Service relating to Yahoo! Personals to include disclosures regarding searchable Yahoo!-created test profiles, if any, that may be used when necessary to ensure service quality. The modifications will disclose how searchable test profiles, if any, are designated so that they are readily identifiable to users.
(g) Yahoo! may make additional changes to its site content, site functionality and Terms of Service in its sole discretion that do not substantially lessen the effectiveness of the changes listed above within the two-year period that this provision remains in effect.
2. Under the Settlement, an eligible Class Member who was a paid subscriber to Yahoo! Personals between October 1, 2004 and August 3, 2007, and who viewed a profile during his or her subscription period that he or she believes was posted for purposes other than dating, is eligible to receive a one-time payment of up to $35.00. If you are an eligible Class Member and wish to receive this benefit, you must timely submit a Claim Form to the Claims Administrator as described above.
The lawsuit was originally filed in October 2005, alleging breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, fraud, and misrepresentation, among other things. The allegations stem from the plaintiffs belief that profiles were posted on Yahoo! Personals for purposes other than dating appeared on the Yahoo! Personals website. To this day, Yahoo! Personals denies all the allegations of the lawsuit, even though it is participating in the settlement to avoid long litigation.
If approved, Yahoo! Personals will contribute $4 million to the settlement fund, in which the money will come out to pay former eligible Yahoo! subscribers $35.
You can read more about the original lawsuit here (from November 2005).
Joe's Comments
The problem with Yahoo! Personals settling is that it could open the door to more class action lawsuits in the future. If you are truly innocent, fight it, and win (even if it costs more to do so), then it sends a message that you are serious about defending yourself. Either way, the changes in the settlement are good ones for online daters. Hopefully other sites will follow suit, particularly when it comes to purging old profiles.
It's about time... yahoo has been notorius for having TONS of "fake" profiles from "women" overseas...
Many times you do a search for women in your area only to find lots of profiles, but few (if any) active on the site.
It was very misleading as a customer.
Dave M.
Posted by: Internet Dating | August 29, 2007 at 08:32 AM
eHarmony is just as dishonest. I let my account expire once, and on another occasion canceled it outright, only to have them tell me that another user "wanted to get to know me." In other words, even though I was not a member, they were shilling my image and profile. I had to threaten legal action before they would stop.
Posted by: Lily | January 04, 2008 at 07:55 PM
Does anyone has a current class action coming up against Eharmony? Or know of the lawyer that handled the yahoo case???
I have found 3 other women scammed by the same the same man who attempted to scam me.
Eharmony deleted the women's matches, assuring them this man was no longer on their site...guess what? My compliant resulted in the match date being altered, the match was sent to me Jan 24 (I kept a copy of his original profile) and his brand new profile was shuffled all the way back to a match date of Jan 1
Eharmony has allowed this con man to completely alter his profile. He has aged himself 4 years in under two months, his occupation has changed, he now has grown children rather than a 6 year old, he is divorced rather than widowed.
We have paper trails of western union money wires, everything for a successful case...we just need someone to take this to court.
Something needs to be done to these sites that provide a haven for out of country scam artists! This man's IP was traced to Nigeria
Posted by: Patti | March 25, 2008 at 11:58 AM
Does anyone know if eHarmony would be liable if they allowed my fiance to re-register with them when eHarmony was informed of our engagement?
Posted by: Karis | June 04, 2008 at 01:55 AM
Yahoo continues business as usual --- MANY phony/gorgeous females still are found on this bizarre, seemingly-intentionally-fraudulent site(2-08-09). Anyone for another lawsuit?
Posted by: Ray | February 08, 2009 at 04:18 AM
New Class Action suit against eharmony, if this sounds familiar to anyone or if you have had similar issues with customer service a eharmony please let me know: After reporting Technical problems that I kept having with the website customer care would reply with automated generic email responses that had NOTHING to do with the problems I was experiencing. eharmony made no effort to contact me and address the problems or attempt to fix them or apologize. The customer service number is conveniently “experiencing an unusually high volume of calls” during regular business hours when management is present and you are asked to call back at a later time. When you call back at a later time customer service tells you there isn’t anyone there after hours that can deal with your problem. When I complained via the incredibly stealthy “contact us” section and located a link to send and email, eharmony cancelled my subscription and refunded a small portion of my membership fee. Furthermore they refuse to answer any of my emails sent to [email protected] which supposedly is sent directly to the administrators of the company. The worst part about it is that I had really connected with someone I like and I have no way to continue communication. I would like to know if there are other unfortunate victims of this type of corporate abuse that would like to contact me.
Posted by: Mateo | May 30, 2009 at 11:22 AM